Working for women's equality and ordination in the Catholic Church: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'. Galatians 3.28

Vatican Documents

Vatican Documents pertaining to the Vatican ban on women priests. Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW). Working for the legal ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the FaithGeneral Decree Regarding the crime of attempting sacred ordination of a woman

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to protect the nature and validity of the sacrament of holy orders, in virtue of the special faculty conferred to it by the supreme authority of the Church (see canon 30, Canon Law), in the Ordinary Session of December 19, 2007, has decreed:

Remaining firm on what has been established by canon 1378 of the Canon Law, both he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, and the woman who has attempted to receive the said sacrament, incurs in latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See.

If he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman or if the woman who has attempted to receive holy orders, is a member of the faithful subject to the Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches, remaining firm on what has been established by canon 1443 of the same Code, they will be punished with major excommunication, whose remission remains reserved to the Apostolic See (see canon 1423, Canon Law of the Eastern Churches).

The current decree will come into immediate force from the moment of publication in the 'Osservatore Romano' and is absolute and universal.

Women's Ordination Worldwide

Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is a dynamic international umbrella network working for women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church. WOW's founding principal is equality.

'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus'. Galatians 3.28

Founded in 1996 at the First European Women's Synod in Austria, Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW) is an ecumenical network of national and international groups whose primary mission at this time is the admission of Roman Catholic women to all ordained ministries.